Now we're national!!!
By G. Jeffrey MacDonald, Special for USA TODAY
You don't have to be poor to get a handout from New Life Christian Church in Centreville, Va. You just need to watch for the church's new ice cream truck, a $10,000 investment in public relations.
"It makes God's love real," says Rick Ruble, pastor at one of the church's three campuses. "In some way it communicates, 'They care about me.' "
Across the nation, back-to-school season also means back to church, and churches and synagogues are increasingly turning to marketers to help set them apart in an age when slick advertising and competition for attention are facts of life.
Signs point to marketing by houses of worship as a growth industry. For instance, Outreach Inc. of Vista, Calif., employs 120 people in equipping more than 20,000 congregations this year with products and advice to raise their local profiles. Last year, the firm helped churches send out 60 million invitations to worship services or special events, up from 1 million in 1996. Competitors such as Aspire!One in Sycamore, Ill., also report a growing interest among midsize churches to invest in marketing:
• Mountain Christian Church in Joppa, Md., goes on TV for the first time this fall with polished ads mass-produced in Tulsa and customized with a local tagline.
• Life Pointe Christian Church in Charlotte has given away 3,000 water bottles and 5,000 Frisbees emblazoned with church contact information and logo. Ten percent of regular attendees say they learned about the church from a Frisbee.
• Three days a week, Granger Community Church near South Bend, Ind., invites the public in for coffee and free access to laptop computers in its Connection Café.
• The United Methodist denomination on Aug. 30 launches a $4 million, four-week campaign integrating TV and other media.
• The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism is urging its 760 affiliated synagogues to establish publicity goals and strategies because "in an age of unlimited choices ... congregations must enter the world of public relations."
As marketing becomes commonplace, congregations say they're reaping benefits. Targeted marketing enabled Pinellas Community Church in St. Petersburg, Fla., to boost its percentage of racial minorities from 3% to 30% in 18 months. In Methodist congregations, attendance of first-time visitors grows by 19% on average when ads are running, says the denomination's Larry Hollon.
But in catering to popular demand, churches might set visitors up for disillusionment, says Philip Kenneson, co-author of Selling Out the Church: The Dangers of Church Marketing.
"Part of becoming a Christian is coming to see that what you thought you wanted deeply is not what you most wanted," says Kenneson, a theology professor at Milligan College in Tennessee. "It's having your wants retrained. So it's pretty hard to appeal to this old set of desires to get people in the door and then all of a sudden say, 'You know, we didn't quite tell you the whole thing.' Then people feel betrayed."
Another danger of marketing to an audience: People are viewed merely "as bundles of needs," says Inagrace Dietterich, director of theological research at the Center for Parish Development in Chicago. "This approach assumes the dominance of personal and private needs" above those of the community or the Creator.
Others, however, see marketing as practical, even necessary.
"You're just using the language of today," says the Rev. Scott Schlotfelt, outreach pastor at Mountain Christian Church in Joppa. "It's the medium of marketing that's used to get a message across."
To date, church marketing has been most common in evangelical circles, where reaching non-believers is an imperative. But others are embracing their own style of marketing. The Unitarian Universalist Association, for instance, has run ads in four media markets since 2003 and is making plans for three more in coming months: Los Angeles, San Francisco and St. Louis.
"Over time, we came not to see the faith given to us as a possession but as a gift to pass on," says the Rev. Tracey Robinson-Harris, who oversees national marketing for the UUA. "One way to do that is to invite others to take part it in."
Still, marketing a faith community can be tricky business, says Stephen Macchia, a church consultant and director of the John and Lois Pierce Center for Disciple-Building at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Mass.
"It's different from the average product that's being sold because it's touching the heart and soul of a person on a much deeper level," Macchia says. "There is definitely a risk."
Congregations are honing niche specialties to reach particular demographics. In San Francisco, for instance, St. Gregory's Episcopal Church aims to attract culture-loving adults with its concerts, frescoes and liturgical dance during worship. Across town, Holy Innocents Episcopal Church caters to young families by advertising its children's program, known as "Godly Play."
The result is that more and more congregations consist of people who share a similar background or station in life. And while that may be what some parishioners want, others worry about the price being paid to attain church growth.
"It's important to understand those different generational needs," says Ian Evison, director of research at the Alban Institute, a congregational consulting group in Herndon, Va. "But if you simply segment the church in a way a marketer would, you have perhaps given up very important values - the idea of the church that can embrace a diversity of ages (and) types of people. Churches and synagogues are struggling with how far do they go with all this."
